Global customer engagement company Clickatell has announced the appointment of new executives to its board, which includes Bank Zero co-founder and serial entrepreneur Michael Jordaan.

In a statement, Clickatell says Jordaan joins the company as chairman of the board. He will be joined by Willem van Biljon and Ryno Blignaut as non-executive directors.

Van Biljon, an entrepreneur and technologist, co-founded Mosaic Software that developed the Postilion payment system. He later joined Amazon where he led the team that developed Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, now Amazon Cloud.

Furthermore, Van Biljon worked extensively with online retailer Takealot.com where he served as CTO and currently as advisor, the statement notes.

Blignaut, according to the statement, has 23 years of financial experience and currently serves as president, chief financial and administrative officer at Restoration Hardware. He also served as the chief business officer of Wheels Up, a private aviation company.

"Our new appointments are a mix of technologists and financial services experts. Michael Jordaan has first-hand knowledge of the needs and challenges of mobile banking through his investment in the app-driven bank, Bank Zero," says Clickatell CEO and founder, Pieter de Villiers. "We will benefit from the tremendous insight offered by Willem. His experience scaling up infrastructure and serviceability at global technology companies is vital for us at this stage of our business. Ryno understands the complexities of global regulations across multiple geographies and has experience managing a global business footprint."

The South African-born and Silicon Valley-based firm says the appointments come at an opportune time because it plans to build on 30% year-on-year organic growth across its regions of global operations.

De Villiers adds: "We see chat banking and chat commerce growing rapidly around the world. Our board's collective global experience along with our leadership team's on-the-ground emerging market success gives us an edge enjoyed by very few companies."